Harper in the Snow
by 0torno
Summary: Salgant crosses the grinding ice. (In my mind, there has to be a reason when someone becomes the only chubby elf in history - dare I suggest trauma?)


Salgant was not yet over his majority when Fingolfin's host began the crossing of the Helcaraxë.

His father cursed and his mother wailed and they begged him not to leave Tirion, but he had been totally and completely taken in by the words of his older brother describing the freedom and glory to be had in Endor. His brother Salar - wiser, stronger, better, mother's favorite, father's favorite - had seen Fëanor's speech, and witnessed the Oath. Salgant had not, of course, since he was too young to attend such official meetings; but his heart was roused all the same by his brother's urgings. He would leave Valinor.

He refused to fight at Alqualondë, and his brother was disappointed. Salar fought valiantly, but Salgant was always the more craven of the two. He was slightly ashamed.

But he knew he was destined for greatness the moment he felt the cold whipping wind of the Helcaraxë on his face; he was ready to finally have an adventure, to prove his worth to country and king, and to his brother.

Salar was the first to die in the crossing of the ice.

It was the first bad storm, four days into their journey. The wind pushed the snow into their faces and assailed them with volleys of stinging hail, the air so volatile it was impossible to see a meter away.

When the group was sufficiently spread out, the ice grew unquiet. It groaned and churned, creaking in the deeps and leaving them stumbling on unsteady feet, frightened and frozen to their brittle bones, blind, deaf to everything but the rushing scream of the greedy elements. Then a mountain of ice plunged into the air and the world crumbled entirely, broken into violent jangling shards of sound and thunder and convulsing ice. Salar was lifted into the air by the mountain and thrown into the howling maelstrom of snow. Salgant was not able to keep track of him long enough in the storm to see his body hit the ground.

When the storm finally cleared and the darkness brought - strangely enough - a respite from the harsh whiteness of snow, the young Salgant and five others found they were separated from Fingolfin's main host. Barren wastes of ice and snow stretched to the horizon in every direction. And the stars were shrouded. They took a vote on which direction they thought they had been going and set off.

When their lembas started to run low a week later, tensions arose.

"We're going the wrong way," argued one of them, voice cracked from anger and exhaustion. "We're heading out to sea!"

"We can't change direction now," countered another. "We have to arrive somewhere eventually."

The first elf and his sister left the group in the opposite direction, tears of desperation and regret freezing on their waxen cheeks as they turned away. "Come with us," they pleaded one last time. "You're going the wrong way. You're going to die out there."

In the end they walked into the wasteland alone. No one ever saw them again.

The four remaining continued on, frozen and malnourished, disheartened. They did not stand much of a chance the next time the ice started to grind.

Salgant and the last remaining other went on for a while. Then the lembas ran out.

The older elf attacked him.

He was never certain as to what could drive someone to try and kill another. Even Salar's blood-smeared blade in Alqualondë had made him feel ill; he could understand even less the desire to kill one's last companion. Salgant drew a kind of sick comfort from the fact that there was one who suffered as he did, one who felt the same biting wind and the same gnawing ache, the same dizzyingly frightening weakness in his limbs.

The fight was no match. Salgant was young, weak, and not particularly brave. The other was strong and powerful despite the ordeal, fueled by desperation or the madness of a dying mind.

But somehow Salgant was the first to pull out his knife, and stood at last over the body of his opponent, crimson staining his hands. He lay down beside it, taking comfort in the warmth of the blood as it ran over his skin. He did not move until every drop was frozen solid and frost traced its dainty way across the pristine surface of the elf's skin, did not move until the blue eyes staring at the blank sky clouded over from cold.

Then Salgant was alone.

He left, leaving behind the corpse of his companion. He took the small (and now nearly useless) pack of supplies, but did not relieve his former companion of his clothing or possessions; he had not the heart to take the cloak, nor even to remove the dagger from where it was embedded in the flesh of the elf's stomach, surrounded by crystals of frozen blood.

He walked on.

The hunger started to hurt him - physically hurt him - after a week. Occasional stabs of white-hot agony ripped at the lining of his stomach, accompanied by dark spots sparking behind his eyes; the world faded for longer each time his head spun and his insides burned with consuming fire. That was the only warmth he felt for awhile. His nose and hands went numb. His feet dragged painfully on the ice, mostly frozen but shot through with stinging needles of sharp pain.

He walked on. He didn't stop, didn't rest; because if he lay down, he wouldn't be able to get up again, and any time wasted led him closer to death. After awhile he even stopped shivering.

When the snow appeared to grow warm, Salgant would have covered himself in it save for the last whispering shreds of logic fluttering at the edge of his consciousness, warning, cruelly dashing his last desperate hopes of finding solace in the wastes. The snow was, at least, good to eat; if nothing else, it did a little to satiate the burning pain in his stomach, and kept him from dying of thirst.

He woke up once in the middle of the night (or what felt like the night, because all was darkness even when the blinding snow swirled in the sky), not knowing where he was or how he had gotten there or why he had been sleeping, since he had a distinct feeling he was not meant to be. After digging himself out of a growing snowdrift with trembling hands, he checked the pack. Memory returned when he saw the contents: one length of rope; one wooden harp, carved by his father with less care than the one made for Salar; a little kindling, but no matches or tinder box; seven bright green jewels; a miruvor bottle devoid of the merest drop; and, lastly, several empty leaves that had once stored lembas bread.

Salgant ate the leaves. They were tough and bitter, but a few savory crumbs of waybread clung to the rubbery surface and some feeling returned to Salgant's fingers along with a tingle of warmth and shooting pains. He stuck his tongue inside the miruvor bottle, but it was well and truly empty and the effort involved made his head spin with weariness and cold. He sat down hard on the crystals of snow. Darkness danced in his vision, and the pain in his gut intensified as a curious muffled buzzing sound filled his ears.

An hour later he threw up the leaves; they were never meant to be eaten. Clear stinging bile filled with shreds of green froze quickly on the ice. Tears of rage and frustration crystallized on Salgant's lashes and streamed down his cheeks, solidifying as the minutes wore on. When he tried to rub off the resulting ice shards, they pulled off flakes of his skin with them; skin blotched angry red on white, waxy, disturbingly novel compared to the bluish tint on his fingers. He decided it was best to leave the ice on his face.

The green gems from the pack he scattered on the snow. Their warm, welcoming glint hurt his eyes and heart with memories of Tirion and his mother's grapes, and weighed him down although their weight was little.

He struggled on for only a short while after that before giving up.

The snow was a warm blanket on him, and the darkness was easy on his dulled eyes. His exhausted limbs remained motionless as the snow blew in to bury them; their weight was too much for him to bear, helpless appendages attached as they were to his body though no blood seemed to flow within.

Stars wheeled overhead, breaking briefly through the black fumes and blinking mockingly down at the elf as his thought drifted far away and time slowed, passing without reserve into the dim future. Nighttime came quickly to his wandering mind, and with it a twisted torrent of dreams.

The heady swirl of images and disjointed sounds and cruel imaginings danced across his distant awareness: a cold body, buried underground and forgotten. Eyes as dull as the shrouded sky. The warmth and beauty of Tirion on the green hill, his parents' bitter goodbyes. One of the celebratory feasts, the tables loaded with so much glorious food that they groaned under its weight. And, throughout it all, endless wastes of grinding ice blurring his pleasure in madness and obscuring the rich colors of Aman.

Then Salar's face swam before his eyes. "Get up, little brother," he urged, and his voice was cold and clear, cutting through the haze of twilight like steel in his mind. "Get up, Salgant. The light is coming."

"I ...can't move," Salgant choked, voice a cracked whisper on the icy wind.

"You can, little brother," Salar said, reaching out a hand. "Get up and walk into the wind."

His limbs were heavy; so impossibly heavy. They seemed frozen solid, broken off from his control, already dead. And the snow was warm, comforting to his aching bones. Why should it not end here? There was no hope. His body was gone - too weak, too painfully empty, too heavy - and his mind was passing away. Let the light come, if it brought an end to this.

"I can't do it!"

"You must! Walk into the wind, little brother! Get up and _walk_!"

"Just let me die," Salgant whispered, rasping. "Just let me go."

"Don't you want to serve your King? Get up. Prove your valour, little brother. Defy this death, mighty harper in the snow! _Walk into the wind_!"

And with a last colossal effort, Salgant put his hands down on the ice and heaved himself into a standing position. His legs quaked unsteadily, the world fragmented in his misted-over eyes, his frailly shivering arms ached; but he took a step forward.

His face was battered with a barrage of stinging hail but he forced one foot in front of the other, pushing desperately against the howling wind that ripped through his hair. He took another step. A moment of agonizing pain stabbed his stomach, but he moved forwards again on fragile feet that felt as if they might crack from the cold at any second.

Salgant walked until his vision blurred and his joints locked. Struggling to draw breath, he took one more step into the wind.

Then he fell.

Snow drifted down on a gentle breeze, delightfully soft after the biting gale he had sought to vanquish during his last, desperate march. The blanket of whiteness faded the world to a close little chamber, empty and clean and perfect for dying in peace; Salgant had one last vague thought that he should sing a goodbye to the hidden heavens (because maybe that way someone would remember the tragic bravery of Salgant the Mighty Harper, even if it was just the Valar), but the snow was too welcoming to fight against, and he wouldn't have been able to open the pack with his frostbitten fingers anyway.

The world faded away.

And then before him, gleaming in the light reflecting from a thousand crystalline facets of ice shards, stood the King's second son. His lips moved, he reached down with brow furrowed in concern, but Salgant heard nothing. The world spun and trembled. The light seemed cruelly bright on his glazed eyes framed by their snow-frosted lashes, refracting and splintering his vision so focus was impossible.

The Prince spoke again, urgent, but the world remained silent save for the rushing of emptiness and an odd sort of pressure. Salgant shook his head slightly in incomprehension, cracked blue lips parting and swollen tongue struggling to regain use.

"My King," he croaked, weak voice dry and harsh as the whipping gale on the ice, head pounding (but at least he could feel _something_). The words did not meet his own ears - they came from far away and did not venture within hearing distance. "I... pledge allegiance... to my savior." His throat felt tender and bruised and the air rattling freely into his lungs was refreshingly cool on the inflamed flesh, viciously rushing through the air passage that seemed all at once bloated and far too wide. He reached out a trembling hand and brushed blacked fingertips over the ice-encrusted boot, feeling nothing.

The Prince drew up urgently, calling something over his shoulder, and darkness spun behind Salgant's eyes. The ground tilted, though the faint figures before him did not seem to notice and remained upright as though the shifting ice did not affect them.

Hands reached down to him, and lifted him, and the world faded to black for a moment before returning, and he was inside.

Lying on his back, cloth covered the sky above him - and he was warm, could feel - and how it _hurt_; how his bones ached, how his stomach clenched, how his skin stung - it was glorious! The painful sensitivity returned to his body was ecstasy in its most pure form.

A bottle was pressed to Salgant's lips and he drank gratefully, the hot liquor soothing his throat.

He could not see the figure who aided him, and he was too pleasantly exhausted to turn his head. Maybe it was his brother, or maybe it was his new King. Or perhaps it was Lórien himself, come to oversee the little Elda who had very nearly given up on life and its intoxicating sweetness.

And oh, it _was_ sweet to be alive.

"Thank you," he said weakly.


End file.
